Your Voice, Your Choice Voting Event success for Blaenau Gwent Residents

On Saturday 13th March, 150 residents of Blaenau Gwent turned out to have their say in Safer Blaenau Gwent’s ‘Your Voice, Your Choice’ Participatory Budgeting Event.

In total £30,000 was available for local people to decide which community safety projects would be funded in their neighbourhoods.

The pilot, supported by the Home Office, invited local residents to come up with ‘community safety’ projects, of no more than £3,000 with only two criteria; projects must be delivered in Blaenau Gwent and they must address ‘community safety’ issues.

Safer Blaenau Gwent worked with the Wales PB Unit, who provided useful advice on important elements of the process, and 6 pre-events were arranged throughout February to raise awareness of Your Voice, Your Choice event.  The response from the residents of Blaenau Gwent was fantastic, with 68 projects submitted, totalling nearly £180,000.

A Working Group, made up of residents, checked the projects to make sure that they would be of benefit to the communities of Blaenau Gwent and that they fulfilled the ‘community safety’ criteria. The group was supported by officers of the Your Voice, Your Choice team, GAVO and Communities First.

 

Coun Des Hillman, Leader of the Council and Chair of the Community Safety Partnership commented, “Our residents have a vital role to play in making their communities safer places to live, work and visit. The Your Voice, Your Choice Event was designed to give spending power to the residents. We wanted to put the residents in the driving seat for a change and that is what we achieved.

“It is never easy balancing budgets, there are always difficult decisions to make and I am sure that our residents now understand some of the challenges we face everyday.”

 

The end result was 28 fantastic projects that were invited to present their ideas at the Your Voice, Your Choice Voting Event on Saturday 13th March. Each project had two minutes to sell their ideas to the audience.

After listening to 28 passionately presented ideas, local people deliberated and voted on which projects would be of most benefit to communities across Blaenau Gwent.  The scoring was close - Ebbw Vale Deaf Club received the most votes by the residents present, and their project is detailed below with the other successful bids:

 

• Ebbw Vale Deaf club - £535
• Mania da Samba - £2,980
• BG Rock School - £2,990
• Tredegar Youth Café - £2,300
• Youth Conference - £3,000
• Cwm Street Dance - £3,000
• Get Yourself Motivated - £3,000
• Nantybwch Senior Citizens - £2,000
• Valley’s Gymnastics Academy - £900
• The Wasters – Tredegar Comp - £1,630
• Beaufort TRA - £3,000
• RTB EV Football club - £1,800
• Newtown Youth Activities - £2,980
• Blaentillery Allotment Gardens - £2,830)